Vice-President M Venkaiah Naidu on Wednesday said that while India would allow “dissent”, “disintegration” would not be acceptable and there should be no celebration of people like Afzal Guru and Yaqub Memon. He also expressed displeasure at particularly the intelligentsia who attack the Army on issues of human rights but said that public opinion was not with them.

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“Dissent is agreeable but disintegration will not be allowed. Afzal Guru can’t be celebrated. Yaqub Memon, who killed so many people, how can he be celebrated?” Naidu said. The Vice-President was delivering the Radha Vinod Raju Memorial Lecture organised by the NIA where he said the agency had done an excellent job in exposing terror funding in Kashmir and caught the separatists “naked”.

Praising the NIA for “demolishing” terror funding networks, he attacked Kashmiri separatists and the intelligentsia. “When they (separatists) are caught, they (the intelligentsia) cry human rights… but when people are killed, no one says anything…. There is a problem with the intelligentsia too who attack the Army and the Army chief. But public opinion is with the Army,” Naidu said. Chief of Army Staff Bipin Rawat was on the dais.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh said the NIA had done a miracle in Kashmir with its massive impact on stone throwing incidents.